People Think Katy Perry's New Song Is About Taylor Swift

There's a lot to love about Katy Perry's new song, "Swish Swish," which the pop star dropped online late Thursday night (May 18). The '90s-house-meets-R&B banger is insanely catchy, has a killer featured rap from Nicki Minaj, and basically confirms Perry's upcoming album, Witness, will be chock-full of bops. But instead of celebrating "Swish Swish" for the delightful summer jam it is, people are tirelessly hunting for Taylor Swift jabs in the lyrics. Basically, the entire Internet thinks the song is Perry's response to Swift's 2014 song "Bad Blood" (which is allegedly about the two singers' so-called feud).

To be fair, it's understandable why fans think this. The lyrics seem to be a cheeky nod to Perry's haters. "Don't you come for me / No, not today," Perry sings. "You're calculated / I got your number / 'Cause you're a joker, and I'm a courtside killer queen."

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In another section, the "Bon Appétit" star asserts, "So keep calm, honey, I'mma stick around for more than a minute / Get used to it / Funny my name keeps comin' outcho mouth." Later, she sings, "Your game is tired / You should retire.... / Karma's not a liar / She keeps receipts."

And these lyrics aren't the only things raising eyebrows. Not even an hour after "Swish Swish" debuted, Swift's good friend Ruby Rose went on a tweeting spree bashing Perry's "purposeful pop" music direction. "'Purposeful poop' to 'bomb a petit' to a sloppy mess of writing over the top of Funkagenda..stop trying to make 'Wit..I mean 'fetch' happen," the Orange Is the New Black star wrote. "I just think with everything going on in the world to go from rebranding as political activist only to ditch it and go low..is...a bummer." Fans are also using Minaj's involvement with the track as evidence. (Remember when she and Swift quarreled on Twitter in 2015 about the MTV Video Music Awards nominations?) Plus, the name of the song quite literally sounds like "Swift."

But as convincing as all of this is, "Swish Swish" probably isn't about Swift at all. Want proof? Read Perry's recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, where she definitively said Witness doesn't include any individually-directed diss tracks. "There is no one thing [on Witness] that’s calling out any one person," Perry said. It doesn't get more matter-of-fact than this, my friends.

Granted, it's obvious "Swish Swish" is a clapback track—and it's probably the song Perry had in mind when she told EW, "You can’t mistake kindness for weakness, and don’t come for me"—but she is clapping back at all her haters on it. Sure, that might include Swift—if the two are even enemies, which is still up for debate—but it might not.

Truthfully, it's about time to put their reductive feud to bed. Save for a few suspect tweets and ambiguous quotes, there isn't any definitive proof Swift and Perry are at daggers drawn for each other. Their public squabble is a product of fan armies and tabloids that love to pit women against each other—which is the case for most female-versus-female "feuds." Quite frankly, both Katy Perry and Taylor Swift have better things to do than bash each other via song. Like cash their checks.